Questions About the Past

Back in September just before the start of the regular season I posed to the Fast Break Blog readers six essential questions for the Warriors 2016-2017 season and offered my thoughts on them. The questions were:

What will happen to team chemistry?

Are we going to like this team as much? Will there still be Strength in Numbers

What rotations will Steve Kerr settle on?

Will Steph Curry finally have a dominant post season?

Will Draymond Green Keep it together?

How many wins will the Warriors have in the regular season?

Through 82 games we got the answers to all but one of these questions, and as the season unfolded the answers were more than satisfactory. As predicted the Warriors’ chemistry hit a bump early with the addition of Kevin Durant, but the team adjusted well, and by the New Year Durant, Steph Curry, and the rest of the team struck a deadly balance. From early to mid-season, the Warriors bench was inconsistent and at times anemic. Concerns over team depth heightened when Durant went down, but by the last quarter of the season the bench gelled, the veterans found their rhythm and energy, and “Strength in Numbers” was back. Though the Warriors won only 67 games (six less than last season), they still finished 6 games ahead of the leagues’ second best team record-wise, and through it all Draymond Green was not only able to keep it together, he ran a scorched earth campaign for Defensive Player of the Year. Continue Reading →

In the 2009-10 season, the Warriors won 26 games. In advance of their 82nd game, I wrote a requiem for the season titled “It Could Have Been Worse.” It actually was an optimistic post. I ended it with the following paragraph:

Nearly every Warriors season recap for the past two decades has ended on a “more-of-the-same” fatalistic note, but this year there’s tangible evidence that someday soon things might be different. If one thing separates this season from the failures that came before it, it’s the open discussion by the local and national media of the franchise’s fundamental and systemic failings — Cohan and Rowell’s lack of coherent leadership, the absence of any steadying check on Nelson’s turbulent personality, and the elevation of PR above substance. Just putting a spotlight on these problems doesn’t necessarily make them better, but it certainly doesn’t make them worse. The discussion of Cohan’s departure has shifted from speculation to near inevitability — and that departure would be more than enough to redeem even this hopeless season.

Later that night, Stephen Curry played all 48 minutes against the Portland Trailblazers, scored 42 points, pulled down 9 rebounds and dished out 8 assists. The Warriors won. Chris Cohan sold the team. And the rest is still-being-written history.

In game 81 of the 2015-16 season, the Warriors tied the NBA’s all-time regular-season win record. In game 81 of the 2016-17 season, the Warriors played a crunch-time line-up of Ian Clark, Patrick McCaw, James Michael McAdoo, JaVale McGee and Zaza Pachulia. Knowing what I know now, I prefer Kerr’s 2016-17 approach. While the Warriors lost Monday night’s meaningless match-up against the Utah Jazz, they escaped injury free and found just enough minutes of relatively intense basketball to help Kevin Durant ease back into the NBA flow. With the truly significant games starting in just under a week, the successful fine-tuning of the Warriors’ machine is far more important than the game’s ultimate outcome. History remembers game 7s, not game 81s.

Kevin Durant picked a good game to return to action. The Warriors entered last night’s contest against the New Orleans Pelicans having already clinched home court advantage throughout the playoffs, so there was no serious imperative to win the game. With Steph Curry, Anthony Davis, and Demarcus Cousins sitting this one out, the search for relevance found its saving grace in Kevin Durant’s come back. Durant and the production of the Warriors bench were bright spots in a game that otherwise had no importance. Continue Reading →

Adam wrote yesterday about an alternate timeline (like in “Sliding Doors”, or any of the time-travel-heavy “X-Men” movies) in which the Golden State Warriors didn’t sign Kevin Durant, and instead retooled and reloaded with the same core than won one championship and came agonizingly close to a second. We’ve seen bits and pieces of what that team might have looked like, with Durant’s injury keeping him out since that fateful game against the Wizards. Yesterday night’s game against the Suns was a darker and grimmer projection of that revisionist history, a world in which two more critical cogs (Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala) were unavailable to play (for rest purposes in reality, for more doomsday-related scenarios in the alternate timeline). With Klay Thompson’s shot lost somewhere in the desert and the already shorthanded Dubs playing their final back-to-back of the season, a loss wouldn’t have been out of the question, even with Steph Curry going supernova and even against a team as tankalicious (“adjective – to tank shamelessly”) as the Suns. Instead, with the help of embedded sleeper agent Luke Walton, the Warriors won the last game they’ll need to win this regular season 120-111 and, thanks to the tankerrific (“adjective – to tank even more shamelessly”) Lakers’ miraculous victory over the Spurs, clinched the #1 seed throughout the entirety of the NBA playoffs.

There aren’t enough timeouts in the history of basketball to stop the Warriors when Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are both feeling it. Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau burned all but one of of his by the end of the third quarter, in a futile effort to slow down the Warriors’ still-accelerating juggernaut. The Warriors — while dropping 15-2 and 15-5 third-quarter runs — barely noticed. Curry (13 third-quarter points on 5-8 shooting) and Thompson (10 third-quarter points on 4-6 shooting) ran around the Wolves like traffic cones. When the curtain dropped on the greatest show in basketball at the end of the third, the Warriors had managed 104 points in 36 minutes on 61% shooting from the field and 56% from three. They were selfless (30 assists), efficient (only 8 turnovers) and feisty (JaVale McGee’s response to Gorgui Dieng’s weak shove). But most of all, they were dominant in an all-around way that these Warriors have made uniquely their own.

Last year at this time the Warriors were in pursuit of 73 wins. The players wanted it and so did the fans. Why not seize the opportunity to have the winningest season in NBA history? But there were some, including Steve Kerr, who were leery of the chase for 73. Hindsight offers that the physical and mental toll that the pursuit took on the players grinded them down. Though the Warriors did in fact make history—dubious history since they fell one win short of a title—they did so in a photo finish with their chest just touching the tape at the very end of the race of the NBA’s first season. The games they played to close out the regular season lacked the energy and verve that powered so many of the inexorable victories of the early season, and by the time the post season started, the Warriors were mentally overwrought. And the Western Conference offers no shelter for the weary in the post season. This season, the Warriors have reversed their timing. They started the season with a 29 point loss to the Spurs, certainly not intentional, but symbolic nonetheless. While adjusting to Kevin Durant, the team sputtered at times, but still won on a consistent basis. Then in early March, for the first time in two seasons, the Warriors lost consecutive games, and this happened twice in the month, culminating in a three game losing streak that sparked a strong reaction from the media. But since that losing streak, the Warriors have run off 11 straight wins, and the last five have come against teams that will be in the playoffs. With only 5 games left to play in the regular season, the Warriors have hit their stride and they are not only dominating quality opponents, but their starters and their veteran reserves are in early season form both physically and mentally. Last night against the Washington Wizards, a team with one of the best records in the second half of this season, the Warriors continued their dominance behind a thrilling performance by Steph Curry, a resurgent effort by Shaun Livingston, and another great all-around game by Draymond Green. Continue Reading →

What makes opponents think they can score against Draymond Green? Is it smaller players thinking they can get past him? (They can’t.) Is it bigger players thinking they can go over him? (Not a chance.) Is it crafty scorers thinking they can out-smart him? (Dumb.) Or is it some inexplicable basketball death wish, a desire to be snuffed out in a blaze of glory? (Wish granted.) Whatever the thought process, 76 games into the NBA season and 5 years into Green’s NBA career, opponents have yet to learn their lesson. In the fourth quarter on Friday, Green and the rest of the Warriors’ equally pugnacious defense gave the Houston Rockets a remedial education.

ESPN began last night’s broadcast of the Warriors and Spurs game with a glitzy video montage of both teams, which was punctuated by the narrator’s question, “Who is one step closer to claiming the title ‘Best in the West’?” Unlike the last time the two teams met, this game meant something as both rosters were intact, except for, of course, Kevin Durant. With the Spurs only two games out of the lead for the West’s top spot and holding the tie breaker, this was by anyone’s standard a big game. Furthermore, there was a psychological imperative for the Warriors to win because entering the game they were 0-2 against the Spurs this season—the only team they haven’t beaten—and 1-34 over the last 35 games that they have played in San Antonio. With both teams coming in riding the crest of a wave, this made for one of the best match-ups of the regular season. The challenge for the Warriors was not just playing a hot Spurs unit, but playing on the road on the back end of back-to-back games. And for good measure, the NBA gifted the Warriors with Scott Foster. Continue Reading →

At the tail end of last season, with the Golden State Warriors running on fumes and trying (in vain) to close out the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, most Dubs fans grew to hate the Jekyll and Hyde nature of how the Warriors opened games. In some instances, they’d run the Cavs out of the building, building insurmountable leads that Cleveland could never overcome. In others, they’d be the ones facing insurmountable deficits, allowing Cleveland to overcome what seemed to be an insurmountable 3-1 deficit enroute to a championship that ripped my heart out. Starting troubles, particularly on the road in the playoffs, can be disastrous. Against the Houston Rockets on Tuesday night (a road game against a playoff-bound opponent), the Warriors had the opposite issue; they started fast, hit some severe bumps in the road, but ultimately held on for a hard-fought (and crucial) 113-106 victory, one that came despite the Warriors giving the free throw-hungry Rockets over 30 points in freebies.